light attenuation ratio

I was looking into lights today and was playing around with the attenuation ratio. I want to add both spot lights and point lights that are very high in the level and i dont want them to wash out the objects near them but have a more universal brightness with a sharp fall off. I was looking at the attenuationRatio to do this but i dont quite understand how it functions. Can anyone shed some light on this (pun intended)? Or is there someway to graphically see how altering the numbers affects the attenuation?

Thanks in advance!